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Lecture notes for Stereotypes
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Lecture notes for Stereotypes from the first year module Introduction to Psychology
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Intro to Psychology18/10/19 Stereotyping
Social information processing
We live in a complex social world where we are often exposed to an overwhelming
amount of information
We need a system to interpret this information in a quick and simple manner
How do we process social information?
How do we think about ourselves and others?
Schemas
A set of interrelated cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allow us to quickly
make sense of a person, situation, event or place based on limited information.
- Hogg & Vaughan, 2008.
A mental framework we use to organise and understand our social world.
Organises categories of information and the relationships among them.
Schemas are developed through life experiences and stored in memory.
Types of schemas:
1. Person schema
- Help us to anticipate the nature of our social interactions with individuals, giving
us a sense of control and predictability.
- What kind of person is he/she? Best friend, neighbour? (Cantor & Mischel, 1971).
2. Self schema
- Cognitive representations about ourselves (Markus, 1977).
- We represent and store information about ourselves in a more complex and
varied manner: development of self-concept.
- Different schemas for real self and also for you ‘ideal’ and ‘ought’ selves (Higgins,
1987).
3. Role schema
- The norms and expected behaviours of specific roles in society.
- Doctor, pilot, estate agent, terrorist.
4. Event schema
- Act as cognitive scripts.
- Provide the basis for anticipating the future, setting goals.
, - Christmas party, holiday, funeral, football match.
Schema development:
Gender-schema theory – once children have developed their gender identity, they
develop associated schemas.
Used to organise and direct the child’s behaviour based on society’s gender norms
and expectations related to gender.
Studies suggest that children learn traditional gender roles from a young age.
How do schemas function? Two basic stages:
1. Identification:
- Assigning a schema to the target
- Identifying a schema which provides a good fit to the object, person or situation.
2. Application:
- Processing information according to that schema in a top-down manner
(Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977).
- Through experience, schemas become more complex and organised
- All things being equal schemas should generally become more accurate.
Schema-Relevant Information:
Reinforced by experience to strengthen schema
Processed quickly and is efficiently applied.
Schema-Irrelevant Information:
Directly contradicts or disconfirms schematic expectations
Tend to be either ignored or quickly forgotten (filtering hypothesis).
What determines schema use?
Which features/cues will be used as a basis for categorisation?
1. Vividness
- An intrinsic property of the stimulus itself
- Emotionally interesting (e.g. violent crime)
- Image provoking (e.g. gory description)
- Close to you in place or time (e.g. crime yesterday on your street)
- However, vividness research can be confounded by other factors e.g. vivid info
may also be more funny or have more details.
2. Saliency
- Salient features determine/cue schema use
- Visibly accessible features (e.g. age, gender, race. Fiske, 1998)
- Distinctive features (e.g. physical appearance, dress. Zebrowitz, 1996)
- Contextually distinctive factors (e.g. single man in a group of women, person
wearing a bright shirt at a funeral)
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